Rove McManus (born John McManus, 21 January 1974) is an Australian variety show host, comedian and owner of the production company Roving Enterprises. Born in Perth, Western Australia he moved to Melbourne to pursue a career as a stand up comedian. After hundreds of gigs, he was asked to host The Loft Live on community television (Channel 31). Rove landed ten late night episodes of his own tonight show, Rove on GTV9 in 1999. Channel Nine did not continue with the series.
The Ten Network gave Rove and his production company, Roving Enterprises, another shot at hosting ten episodes of his show in late 2000. The resulting Rove Live is now a weekly talk show on Network Ten as well as on TV3 in New Zealand. The show involves celebrity guests, publicity stunts, comedians and live bands.
In 2002 Rove was nominated for the Gold Logie Award and Rove Live won the Logie for Most Popular Light Entertainment Program. In 2003 Rove took home three Logies, including Most Popular Presenter, Most Popular Light Entertainment/Comedy Program and the coveted Gold Logie for most popular personality on Australian television. In 2004 and 2005 he repeated his 2003 award haul, including Gold Logies.
He voiced a crab in the 2003 animated blockbuster, Finding Nemo. He is represented by personal management company Token Artists.
Roving Enterprises has produced a number of programs apart from Rove Live including the sketch comedy program Skithouse and the AFL Football program, Before The Game. Roving has also produced the ARIA Awards since 2002, hosted each year by Rove up until 2004.
In July 2004 he announced his engagement to his girlfriend of three years, Australian actor Belinda Emmett. They married on January 29, 2005 at the Mary Immaculate Church in Waverley, a suburb in the east of Sydney, Australia.
Rove returned to his roots during 2005 with a live solo stand-up comedy show which toured Australian cities Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney and Adelaide whilst still returning to Melbourne each Tuesday to film his weekly TV show Rove Live. New Zealand locations were also added, in Wellington and Auckland. On the 6th of September 2005, Rove hosted the 200th episode of Rove Live
In 2004, he had - for a short time, an official fatwa placed on him by John Safran, thus declaring a "holy war" between Rove and the UK sharia court. It was later removed at Safran's request.
He also campaigned to have the prime minister to appear on his show during the 2004 federal election. Claims have been made that members of the public heckled John Howard to appear on his show without success. Eventually McManus himself approached the Prime Minister for an interview and was declined. Some viewers saw this as an attempt to discredit Mr. Howard during the election. Some allege that McManus desperately supports the Australian Labor Party because of this sequence of events and extremely consistent satire criticising the Liberal Government.
On the 25th October, 2005 episode, Rove Live had a segment that Rove himself deemed "controversial", a live TV vasectomy. For the Season Finale he offered six cars as prizes on his show. It is likely these two segments were aimed at increasing ratings.
His final show for 2005 rated at about 747,000 viewers Australia-wide, which is considered too low for a show as expensive as Rove Live. The show was revamped for 2006. The first episode of the new show went to air 14 February 2006.
